Living in the Land of the Dead
by Gnom DePlume
Summary: You know the story - Lydia and Beej meet up again after she dies, etc.  It's been done.  But never quite like this... Watch as Beetlejuice proves all her assumptions about being dead wrong! Mo-toon verse
1. Chapter 1: Accidents Happen

A/N: I pretty much finished one of my stories, and there have been no demands for a sequel, so I thought I'd start a new one to not finish! Actually, just kidding, this has been sitting around on my hard drive for ages. I thought I'd post it for a lark. And there's even part of the next chapter already written, so if anyone actually likes this there might be an update within the year! Exciting!

Chapter One: Accidents Happen

"C'mon, Lydia, there's going to be a slammin' party at the Dee Frat tonight."

"I've just got one more to develop…. And it's Delta, not Dee." Lydia looked over from where she was clipping up a dripping photograph, and was just able to make out her friend's face in the dim red light.

"Whatev, it's all Greek to me," Gabby said, her eyes glinting in the shadows of her face and she rolled them dramatically. "You need to get out more. You're gonna kill yourself for art someday, working so hard." She jumped off the stool she was perching on and headed for the labyrinth of curtains around the door, shielding the room from outside light. "Ciao! Gimme a call when you're done being boring."

"So, never, then?" Lydia called back.

"Smartass!" And then Gabby was gone, and Lydia could really concentrate on her work, and the amazing effects one could achieve simply processing the paper correctly.

Only one other student was still working, Mike, a perpetual procrastinator. He had long, lank hair he was always flipping out of his face in a move too girly for words, and he was never on time for anything. He was also incapable of working quietly, but Lydia had gotten accustomed to tuning out the sounds of bottles opening, chemicals being mixed, the splish splash of tongs in baths, and even the way people muttered to themselves or their photos when things were going right, or more usually, wrong.

But when he started cursing loudly it drew Lydia out of her trance. She turned to ask him what the hell was his problem and stopped cold.

He was carrying a tray one-handed with a bunch of open bottles and hopping in place on one foot, clutching at his other foot.

"What the fuck!" Lydia said. "Are you trying to kill us both? !"

"I stubbed my toe on this stupid shelf!" he said, and then tried to kick the solid steel shelving. It didn't work.

Lydia watched in slow motion as the tray full of hazardous and volatile chemicals tumbled out of his hand as he shouted in incoherent pain. The red light made it difficult to tell apart the liquids glugging out of the carelessly left-open bottles, but as they mixed on the floor the sharp scent that normally pervaded the dark room doubled and tripled. It was like bleach and rotten eggs and battery acid, and curiously, a hint of almonds. The non-reactive tiling started smoking.

She started coughing immediately and tried to pull up the neckline of her black smock out from under her apron to cover her mouth. That dumb jackass had been right next to the door and had already deserted her, the asshole, without even a cursory attempt to use the spill kit that was two feet away. She was halfway across the room before she even realized she'd told her feet to move it or lose it. Then it got complicated. She couldn't just charge through the puddling chemicals, they'd eat through her ballet flats like something that gets eaten very quickly, and then she wouldn't be going anywhere. What a day not to wear her clunky combat boots!

The world was spinning now and her lungs wouldn't work right. With desperate strength she upended one of the heavy work tables over the spill and she…almost…made it. Lydia collapsed into the black out curtains and managed to puke into a convenient waste bin, which had never been convenient before because it was the only one in the room and as far away from where she preferred to work in the back corner as possible. She could feel the handle of the door, but she couldn't struggle past the damned curtains to open it and as everything got dim, she thought, 'I guess today was the day.'

Then she opened her eyes. The ceiling was different. It wasn't tinted red, for one thing. She got up off the floor slowly, and spent an inordinate amount of time staring at a potted plant, taking in the lack of suffocation, nausea, twitching death throes, and really, any feeling at all.

"Take a number, and have a seat."

Lydia glanced over and blinked at a blue woman with a 'Miss Argentina' sash, who was busily filing her nails behind a receptionist's window.

"I'm…dead, right?" Lydia asked.

There was no pause in the nail-filing. "Uh-huh."

"Shouldn't I be…haunting something?"

Miss Argentina rolled her eyes and smacked the nail file onto the desk. Glaring at Lydia, she said, "Do you think you're alive?"

Lydia raised an eyebrow. "No."

"Then take a _number_ and have a _seat_. Your case worker will be with you sometime this century. Next time, make an appointment."

"To die?" But Lydia grabbed a numbered paper from the ticker and pulled. And pulled and pulled. Millions, billions, what comes after the one that comes after billions? Her number was somewhere thereabouts. It was so long it dragged on the floor as she headed over to the seating area.

It was all oddly familiar. The blue stucco walls, the black and white tiles, the dead beauty pageant receptionist. Like a story she'd heard a lot when she was younger. The couches were mostly full, except for one where a guy with a shrunken head was sitting by himself, impatiently tapping his white patent loafers and checking his watch every five seconds. He looked kind of familiar, too. Especially the tacky maroon tux. Once, she'd imagined that…no. She wasn't going to think about any of that. It had just been a bad time in her life, her therapists had assured her. The mind had strange ways of coping, it was normal to fantasize, but she had to let it go – even if the memories kept trying to crawl back in.

Anyway, she wasn't going to spend an eternity waiting on her feet. She drifted over and asked, "Is this seat taken?"

"Does it look like anyone's sitting their ass in it?" was the rude, squeaky answer.

She sat down. Then she reconsidered, and stood up again to pull off her rubber apron, taking off her protective gloves and stowing them in the apron pocket before wadding it all up and sitting down again.

"Dammit, make up your mind!" the guy shouted, sounding like he just sucked on a helium balloon. Then he actually looked at her. "Although I can see why you might be nervous, sitting next to a stud like me." He licked his hand and smoothed back his hair, the tininess of his head compared to his hand making the gesture seem like he was playing with a doll, one of those makeover Barbie heads, albeit one that had gotten attacked by hyper three-year-olds with green crayons and then chewed on by a dog.

Lydia edged away and stuck the wadded up apron between them.

He leaned in closer. "Hey, do I know you?"

She leaned back, and hit the arm of the couch. "I doubt it. How long have you been dead?" She grimaced.

He shrugged and leaned in even farther, so that they were almost horizontal. "Six centuries, give or take a few decades." He squinted at her, scratching his miniature stubble. "I swear I've seen that face before. Did you maybe used to have," he asked while making a sort of exploding motion over her head, "black hair or something?"

Blinking, she removed his still waving hand from her air space with one careful finger. "Uh, yeah. I stopped dying it a couple of years ago. Maybe you knew an ancestor of mine?"

"Huh," he grunted and sat back. She was just about to relax when he slyly insinuated his arm over her shoulder and said, in as low a pitch as he could muster, "So, ya get tired of the carpet not matching the drapes, or what? C'mon, you can confide in me!"

"That is none of your business!" Lydia shoved him off.

"Hey!" he squeaked. "I'm just tryin' to be friendly!" He grabbed her hands.

A painful jolt traveled up her arm from her left ring finger, where his flesh touched the ring that had resisted all attempts to remove it. From the way he let go like his cat was on fire it was obvious that he felt it, too.

"What the hell was that?" He grabbed her hand more carefully, his long nails and rough calluses tingling as he dragged them across her palm. He turned her hand and stared, frozen, not even pretending to breathe, at the slim gold band set with a red stone. "Where'd you get this?" He finally looked up, his eyes hard in his shrunken face.

"I…" Lydia swallowed down the indistinct memories that surged up, memories that thousands of dollar of therapy and medication had told her were false. But, hell, who would believe in ghosts like a dead guy, right? "I actually don't remember," she said, "but I read my old diaries and I guess I used to believe that it was the wedding ring in a cracked out ceremony where this poltergeist named Beetlejuice tried to force me to marry him."

He jumped up, dragging her along. "It starts with an 'L'! L-L-" He snapped his fingers. "Lydia!"

She frowned. "How did you know…?"

He clasped all of their hands to his chest. "It's me, babes! The Ghost with the Most!"

"You seriously expect me to believe that your name…is Beetlejuice." She leveled a stare at him.

"Quiet down out there!" Miss Argentina bellowed.

"Aw, put a sock in it!" he bellowed back.

Lydia finally worked her hands free and sat down again, crossing her legs, determined to ignore him.

He loomed over her, propping an arm on the back of the couch. "Say my name again and I'll prove it to ya."

Apparently he wasn't going to let up. So, with a bored sigh, she gave in, absolutely sure that this would prove him wrong for some reason. "Beetlejuice."

Instead he laughed maniacally and pulled on his ears until his head popped to a normal size. The effect this had on his grin was downright disturbing. "Finally!" he exalted.

Lydia was beginning to realize the depth of her mistake.

"Now, we're going to go talk to Junie, because this has got to be a mistake. There's no way you can be dead!"

"I'm fairly certain I died," Lydia protested to no avail as he hauled her up off the couch again and began dragging her off. "Also, it's not my turn."

"Sure it is!"

"But the sign-"

The sign exploded.


	2. Chapter2:Juno is Sympathetic, No, Really

A/N: Well, it hasn't been an entire year, that's something, right? If there's anybody that still cares about this fic, I may or may not have plans for the next chapter...

PREVIOUSLY:

"Now, we're going to go talk to Junie, because this has got to be a mistake. There's no way you can be dead!"

"I'm fairly certain I died," Lydia protested to no avail as he hauled her up off the couch again and began dragging her off. "Also, it's not my turn."

"Sure it is!"

"But the sign-"

The sign exploded.

NOW ON WITH THE STORY!

Chapter Two:

"I feel bad for you, kid," Juno said, smoke pouring forth from the slit in her throat as she puffed at her cigarette. "But I can't sign off on a restraining order. If I gave everybody who files against him a restraining order, I wouldn't have time to sleep and he'd have to be exiled to the Outer Rim."

Lydia sighed and rested her chin on her fist, elbow propped on Juno's desk. In the chair next to her Beetlejuice was sprawled out with his feet balanced precariously on piles of paperwork, which Juno had already swatted him for twice.

"So there's nothing I can do to get him to leave me alone?" Lydia asked.

Beetlejuice snorted and mumbled, "Ya could try asking nicely, what the hell, it might work."

"Other than the usual threats, bribes, and/or running away screaming? No." Juno huffed and stubbed out her cigarette to steeple her hands together as she leaned back in her chair. "As much as it pains me to say this, you might as well let him show you the ropes, if you're sure that you don't intend to honor your somewhat morally dubious wedding vows and be, shall we say, reinstated as one of the living?"

"What? Why?" Lydia looked at her askance, motioning towards Beetlejuice as if to say, 'look at that, I'd be better off with a tornado, or maybe a ravenous wolverine.'

"For one thing, he's got a spare room in his apartment complex. More than one actually – for some reason he has trouble keeping tenants."

"Yeah, Lyds, you can shack up with me." He made several obscene gestures.

Lydia shuddered.

Juno continued. "I don't think you realize how rare that is. Space down here is at something of a premium, after thousands of years of people dying and stubbornly refusing to move on. It could take you some time to find a place of your own. A couple of decades, if you're lucky.'

"If this is some trick to get me stuck in a common law marriage to get him out of your hair…" Lydia began, frowning.

Juno cut her off with a sharp gesture and a glacial glare. "You don't understand jack about the rules down here, or you wouldn't be talking about 'common law' anything. But you'll learn, little Miss 'so sharp I'll cut myself.'" She lit another cigarette, relaxing back into her general expression of exasperated annoyance. "I wouldn't trick you into marrying that S.O.B.-"

"Hey! Don't talk about dear ole mumsie that way!"

"-even if your life depended on it, which it certainly does! Now get the hell out of my office. I don't want to see either of your faces darken my door again, do you hear me?"

She unceremoniously herded them out and slammed the door shut behind them.

"So!" Beetlejuice rubbed his hands together gleefully. "Shall we head over to my place now, or later?" He put particularly sleazy emphasis on 'later' with a half-lidded leer and thrust of his hips.

"Ugh." Lydia's shoulders slumped and her already glum face took on a decidedly shoot-me-now cast. "I'm not going to sleep with you. You know I'm not going to sleep with you. Even if I wanted to, which I don't because you're a crazy pervert who only _thinks_ I promised to marry you, which I don't remember at all, thank you very much. _Even_ if I wanted to, apparently that would count as 'consummating' our fictitious 'marriage' and we'd both be booted out of the Neitherworld tout suite!" Hand quotations, as Lydia made them, were a viciously sarcastic attack made all the more potent in contrast to her dreary expression.

Surprisingly, Beetlejuice just started laughing and threw an arm around her shoulders which proved impossible to dislodge. "Babes, babes. I dare ya to spend a week, one fucking week, dealing with this shithole without wishing ya could die again just to get out. I won't even hafta ask, you'll come crawling to me, begging on your hands and knees, desperate for-"

A swift elbow to the gut cut him off before he could get to the really juicy details of his delusion. He finally let go.

"Alright," Lydia said, "I'll take that dare. One week, with no innuendos, no propositioning, no groping, and most of all no marriage talk from you." She knew this was childish, but she spit on her hand and held it out. "Shake on it?"

Immediately regretting the gesture when he began making horking noises and spat a huge loogie in his own hand, she cringed but didn't take it back. She needed him to promise.

He shouted, "Done!" and vigorously pumped her hand.

When he finally let go Lydia was feeling distinctly nauseated by the slide of cold slime on her palm and wasted no time wiping it off onto her rubber dark room apron she was carrying in a bundle under her arm.

"So, whatcha wanna do first? Check out my digs or see the sights?"

Sighing, she said, "I suppose I ought to see where I'll be living-"

"Ah-ah!" Beetlejuice interrupted with a raised eyebrow and a waved index finger.

For half a second a vaguely surprised expression crossed her unrelentingly dour features. "Oh. Unliving?"

"Inhabiting, residing, haunting" he said, starting to walk off. Then he spun and continued on walking backwards, shoving his hands in his pockets. "Occupying space, merely _existing_ when, and Lyds I mean this sincerely, you could be _living_."

Lydia stopped following him. "You shook on it!"

"Ya never said nothing about not mentioning how very, very dead you are. Which is pretty dead. I doubt ya could get any deader." He was getting farther away.

With a slight roll of her eyes Lydia conceded the point and hurried after him.

"Hell, I've never seen a stiffer corpse. Loosen up or I might mistake you for a coat rack…"

His voice faded into the distance as they moved out of sight, and then the corridor outside Juno's office was empty.


	3. Chapter 3: Office Sign

EDIT 7/13: I reworded the last scene a little bit to make it sort of clearer - this is exactly the thing I would need a beta for (telling me when plot points are as clear as mud). *smacks forehead*

A/N: It's kind of crazy that a two chapter story has 27 reviews, but thanks! So few of them are angry demands that I be lynched, it's amazing. It's been a long wait (a year – a horribly busy year) but this story is not dead. Much like Bela Lugosi, it is undead.

I haven't had anybody to beta for me for quite some time (Any volunteers? You get advanced excerpts! Thrilling glimpses into the writing process, unimaginably bad grammar and spelling! A chance to nag me into updating more frequently! Who could resist that? ...Don't give me that look.) so if this sucks it's all on me.

If this chapter is well-received the next few bits are lined up, but are a bit on the drabblesque side. Honestly, this would update a lot faster if I did drabbles…

PREVIOUSLY:

Surprisingly, Beetlejuice just started laughing and threw an arm around her shoulders which proved impossible to dislodge. "Babes, babes. I dare ya to spend a week, one fucking week, dealing with this shithole without wishing ya could die again just to get out. I won't even hafta ask, you'll come crawling to me, begging on your hands and knees, desperate for-"

A swift elbow to the gut cut him off before he could get to the really juicy details of his delusion. He finally let go.

"Alright," Lydia said, "I'll take that dare. One week, with no innuendos, no propositioning, no groping, and most of all no marriage talk from you." She knew this was childish, but she spit on her hand and held it out. "Shake on it?"

Immediately regretting the gesture when he began making horking noises and spat a huge loogie in his own hand, she cringed but didn't take it back. She needed him to promise.

He shouted, "Done!" and vigorously pumped her hand.

NOW ON WITH THE STORY!

Chapter Three:

The bureaucratic hallways of the Neitherworld Authorities were a labyrinth that Beetlejuice knew like the back of his hand – in fact one day when he had been particularly bored he'd started meticulously picking out an intricate and tiny map of the place in a patch of mold on his left knuckle. Before could finish it however, everything changed.

And that was the problem, really.

"We've walked past the exact same three doorways at least twice now. Are you sure you know where you're going?" Lydia blew her overlong blonde bangs out of her eyes and crossed her arms.

Beetlejuice rounded on her. "Shh!" Flecks of spittle flew from the force of his shushing. He crouched down and pointed to a long row of scuff marks on the wall. "Office sign," he said in quiet, ominous tones.

Lydia peered at him skeptically under lowered eyebrows. "No." She pointed at the lettering on an office door, _Psionically Actualized Entities Division_. "Office sign."

He reached up and yanked her down to his level. He hoarsely whispered in a voice that was conversely louder, "Look at the number and intensity of the scuffs. Marks like these, they're made by size ten combat boots worn by someone that had to deal with a pms-ing hell beast on a regular basis."

A quiet laugh behind them made Beetlejuice freeze. Lydia shook off his suddenly lax grip and stood.

A girl on the cusp of womanhood leant against the opposite wall, familiar in that maddening way where you can never quite remember where you've seen someone before. "You should know. They're yours, after all," she said. She wore a vaguely Renaissance dress of quilted red and white brocade, with long brown hair rippling down her back from under a jeweled skull cap. "Who is this I see before me?" Her smile took on a wry edge. "Your new ghoul?"

Beetlejuice was upright and grinning nonchalantly so fast it almost seemed like he'd been that way the whole time. "Nah, this is–"

"I'm Lydia Deetz," she said, stepping on his toes. She really didn't want to know what he'd introduce her as. "Recently deceased and not his anything."

"I'm Juliet," the young lady said. "So pleased to meet you." She held out her hand somewhat awkwardly, as if more used to gentleman kissing it, but together they fumbled through a handshake. "I'm sure that we'll be bosom friends, having so much in common. Star-crossed lovers, parted and reunited by death only to encounter more betrayal. Between you and I," Juliet leaned in conspiratorially, hanging onto Lydia's hand, "your husband over there has always been a fickle, gorbellied codpiece."

"Hngh!" Beetlejuice nearly choked on his tongue in an effort not to comment. No marriage talk, not even to point out that yes, he was definitely her husband and she liked his codpiece just fine, thank you, goodbye. And someday Lydia would even admit it.

Trying to discretely free her hand, Lydia flatly stated, "He's not my anything, either."

Not today, obviously.

Beetlejuice whisked them apart with a egg beater he had in his pocket. Juliet cradled her hand, exclaiming in pain. He then hustled Lydia down the hallway, shouting back, "NiceCatchingUpWithYaDon'tForgetNotToWrite!"

Lydia hissed at him, "What the hell, Beetle…Beej?"

Juliet raised her voice just enough to be heard as they turned the corner. "Did you think you could hide it from me? The wedding is in your file, you addle-pated numbskull. You may not be my problem anymore, but I still have your file!"

Beetlejuice and Lydia finally left the looping corridor, which they had actually been down nine times, twice in the opposite direction and five times in nonsequential order as Beetlejuice tried all the tricks he knew to rearrange the floor plan. The actual office sign etched by wandering ghosts on inconspicuous patches of walls (it was a communal effort made to navigate the shifting maze) had all indicated that going through Juliet's department was currently the only way to get out of the building without spending a week taking all right turns. He'd figured out the ruse, and deliberately sprung the trap – but he didn't have a clue what that interfering bitch had really gotten out of it.

Someday she was going to leave her department, in which she might as well be a god, and he was going to have a goddamn field day, yessiree. He might even let all the other poor bastards whose lives she'd made unliving hells take a potshot. Maybe. If there was anything left of her.

When they were far enough away, he clapped his hand over Lydia's mouth to stop her incessant complaints and demands to know what was going on.

Someone had drawn stick figures and what appeared at first to be random marks but were actually a complicated diagram in the corner of a grimy window that opened onto a wall, the office it was originally part of having decided to take a stroll.

"You wanna know how to get around the bureaucracy, take a good look at this." He turned her head to face the window. "Learn to read the office sign. You see this dog with tits that's foaming at the mouth and labeled with a 'J'? And the crossed out circle around it? And the guy clutching at his balls and writhing in pain? Don't have nothing to do with Juliet if you know what's good for me!"

Lydia peeled his hand off her face. "What does she have against you anyway? Is she your ex or something?" she asked, raising an eyebrow and propping a fist on one hip.

He refused to answer any questions about their strange encounter, mainly by distracting her with lessons on how to interpret the various dialects of maps and sign posts used by different departments.

*Scene Break*

When they were out of sight, Juliet raised the hand that had held Lydia's and examined it. There were quickly fading bruises from the vigorous whisking and delicate, nearly invisible threads, spun out from their brief contact, wrapped around her fingers. One was red, and both ends lead around the corner along the path taken by the fleeing poltergeist and the soul mate he had just denied to her face. Juliet let that thread be tugged away and the tangle unwound, her hand clenching into a fist.

The other had no color to speak of; it could only be seen by the way it occasionally glimmered and, with a furrowed brow, Juliet traced it hand over hand to where it disappeared into the ether, leading someplace she currently could not follow.

Her conversation about string with Ariadne had been so helpful. Maybe it was time to strike up a conversation with Zhu and Alice about butterflies and rabbit holes…


End file.
